Oh, her aching back (no, really)

My mother suffers substantially from back pain. Over the last decade she’s had two spinal fusion surgeries and a hip replacement. We didn’t know about her dementia before the surgeries, but looking back I know she was distinctly worse after each one. Her immediate recovery periods were always nightmarish, and each time seemed to diminish her permanently.

It was after one of those surgeries that my father confessed to me his worry that she hadn’t been paying the bills. (Blind, he couldn’t pay them or verify her payment of them on his own.) He handed me a briefcase with the entire contents of her desk in it and we sat up till the wee hours sorting through stuff. That’s when I took over the bill paying. Diagnosis followed not long after. It’s been almost 5 years now.

At any rate, the pain has been ramping up again over the past year. Nobody thinks she can undergo another surgery. She’s been seeing a physiologist at Spaulding, who today performed a radiofrequency ablation procedure which will, we hope, deaden the nerve that is hurting her. It would be so great if it worked. Mom’s concentration is flighty enough; the pain makes it so she can’t tolerate standing for long, and you just know she isn’t listening to anything that’s said half the time because she’s distracted by how much she hurts.

So, we desperately want this to succeed.

She arrived for her procedure this morning in the car of a kind volunteer who drove her from Chatham so that I wouldn’t have to do two round trips. I met her at the door, and we checked in. She was absolutely calm (thank you Ativan — and thank goodness she managed to save the last two little pills for today.) The doctor’s assistant wheeled her away, and I headed to the cafeteria to sit with a coffee and go through my “Mom & Dad” binder, culling out of date papers.

I had a nice visit with a friend who works there. We talked about the mixed pride and heartbreak of sending a kid to college. I told her all the Facebook pictures of friends’ new college students are breaking my heart, as I’m half wrecked because my eldest just started high school and she STILL LIVES IN MY HOUSE. I am risking my Spock-like reputation by confessing to these things, but I do.

I saw my daughters’ 2nd grade teacher, since retired, a really great person who lost her son to addiction last year and somehow still puts one foot in front of the other.

I saw the physical therapist who told me I had an attitude problem when I said it would be nice to be done with the the pain in my shoulder for which I went to see her for help some weeks ago. We ignored each other with no love lost. That remark of hers still makes me angry whenever I recall it. The day she said that, I should have cancelled all the rest of my appointments.

Her assistant passed by and was lovely, though.

So 45 minutes went quickly by, and then Mom was asking for me in the recovery room. Her procedure reportedly went well. She was reclining next to a pile of snack wrappers. She’d eaten all the Lorna Doones and half the Ritz peanut butter crackers and was struggling to unwrap the Fig Newtons. This was not a procedure she’d had to fast for, by the way. She asked me, “do you drive to an office somewhere for the program you’re on?” I had no idea what she meant. “For losing weight,” she said. “No Mom. I’m not on a program. I just quit eating bagels and muffins and cookies, and got serious about walking more often.” “Oh. Did you read about that in a magazine?” and so on, for the duration of the Fig Newtons. My 200 pound mother in a recliner shoving junk food in her face asking me how I lost 10 pounds.

I brought the car around, she was helped into it, and we headed home. I’d told Dad to expect us at about 11:00. When we got in, he was asleep, but he jumped up, shouting “IT’S ONLY 10:26!” “Hi, Dad. 10:56 I think.” Dad checks his talking watch. “Oh, 10:56. All right. Hello.” By this time Mom’s tired enough to assure him all went well and then go right to bed for a nap.

With Mom asleep, I have the opportunity to assess the status of the fridge and freezer. Peapod delivered groceries yesterday so they’re in good supply. Excellent supply, you could say. Mom had ordered four gallons of milk and 36 yogurts and 8 bags of croutons, among other things. Dad was concerned that he couldn’t distinguish the individual rice pudding cups from the individual yogurt cups. We determined that the rice pudding cups have a unique dimple on the bottom, solving that difficulty. One less thing. I don’t tell him about the rotten food that I’m hauling away. There’s nothing he can do about that.

Thus concluded today’s adventure. What I took away: 3 gallons of milk, 3 lbs chicken breast (Mom doesn’t cook but hasn’t stopped shopping as if she does), 3 bags frozen peas, 1 bag frozen corn, 1 loaf of raisin bread, 1 salad bowl. All this I can use. In other bags: 2 dozen frozen bananas that are too far gone even to use for banana bread, 4 bags of rotting baby carrots, one open can of pecan pieces, one open box of 5-year-old Fibre One cereal, one plastic container of an ancient unidentified granular substance, and 1 gray withered slice of pizza in a Ziploc bag that, thank God, stays closed. All this I throw away in public trash cans before I get home.

When I finally do get home, it’s 12:30, and I sit down to work. The summer lull is over and I have actual writing to do for actual money. I’d be in better shape to do that if it didn’t feel like I’ve done a full day’s work already.